Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Lifetime Supply

You got a Ford press too, ain't you shrap?

Some people shoot a lot and some people write about it...

Shooting is better than writing!

Shrap n S.Tx sho do got that right...ScottyO.

the only way I see having a "LIFETIME SUPPLY" of BULLETS is having a 35-50 caliber rifle and casting your own, as needed, from a stash of several thousand lbs of lead ingots.
and obviously youll need to store a couple dozen 5000 primer cartons, thousands of brass cases,the required loading tools, and more powder than the feds would be likely to approve of in any residential address

Oh, I forgot about my lead supply. Let's just say there won't be any tornadoes carrying my garage away like Dorothy & Toto.

Kirk,

It's a good thing you started shooting plastic-tipped bullets. Otherwise a bunch of people would have never heard of them....

Thanks for noticing that, I am trying to do my part. You are in for the Invitational, right?

Kirk,
Which soft bags are those on your "ready on the firing line" shelf of ammo?

Yep. Already have a tent, earplugs The Essential Shovel on the list.

I have the Dillon ammo bags that look just like those. I would guess that's what they are.

Bob

I was just starting to feel like a hoarder until I saw Shrapnel's stash. Now I see that I'm just buying in bulk.

Muledeer is not posting pics, so I know he's got it worse than Shrapnel.

They are Dillon "Border Shift" range bags...

Thank you.

Don't forget the Rent-A-Shovel.

I definitely have enough stuff for all the hunting I'm likely to do, but maybe not all the shooting.

Lately, I've been trying to acquire stuff that is multi-purpose. For example, the Laser Cast .458 bullets I bought for my .45/70 will work in my Knight with the proper sabot. LilGun is good in the Hornet and jacketed .357 loads as is H110. Varget is good for all kinds of stuff, even if not always ideal and according to Pearce's article in the newest Hodgdon Annual, doesn't much care what primer you spark it with in the .308. Trail Boss is fine and pretty much foolproof for .38 practice loads and in my limited tests, gives good accuracy with jacketed-bullet rifle loads.

Answer: None

I was raised near Sierra Bullets former Santa Fe Springs, CA factory and my parents still live in the same place. Right up to the time Sierra moved to Missouri, I used to buy component bullets there by the pound in paper sacks. I had accumulated upwards of fifty pounds of 120 grain. .257" GameKing HPBT's for example, which I thought would be a "lifetime supply" of bullets for my .250 Savage rifle.

Well, that wasn't a lifetime supply. It took me three years to shoot it up. I had about the same poundage of 165 grain, .308 GameKing HPBTs for my .30-'06. They were gone in three years, too.

I bought the last of these bullets in 1991 or 1992 and for the next 20 years, I barely made a dent in the supply. But I moved from the Los Angeles Metro area to rural eastern Oklahoma in 2007 and finally got all of my guns and reloading stuff moved with me by 2012. I live just a fifteen minute drive away from a public range that I can use for the cost of a hunting license that I'm going to have each year, anyhow.

Proximity to the shooting range = more opportunity to shoot. And I shoot at least 200 rounds of center-fire rifle ammo per week. When I had those paper sacks of Sierra bullets moved to my ammo locker here in Oklahoma, I was shooting 200 rounds of centerfire rifle ammo, four days a week. Thus, what was meant to be a lifetime supply only lasted about three years.

So I've given up on trying to keep a lifetime supply in favor of keeping a reserve supply of both loaded ammo and components to load more -200 rounds of loaded ammo and enough components to reload those. I don't know why I even bother doing that -no real reason, beyond not wanting to be without ammo.

Yeah, a "lifetime supply" can vary with your circumstances.

I can still remember buying my first brick of .22 Long Rifles at age 12 and thinking I had a year's supply. Fortunately I had a summer job in rural Montana and it didn't last much longer than a couple of boxes had before that.

Had the same feeling when I bought my first 8-pounder of rifle powder. Same deal: Was living in a rural part of Montana and it didn't last a year. I just shot more!

Just yesterday I stumbled into 700 .20 32gr. bullets that my .204s like, a LOT. I practically stole them, in fact, but I don't need 'em, really. But when a deal presents itself, you gotta be nuts not to scarf it up.

That raises my .20 bullet stock by about 50% and I'll need new barrels before I use 'em up.
I've got plenty of deer bullets, and plenty of rat bullets,plenty enough powder to keep them loaded, and enough 12 gauge already loaded to last "awhile".
I've been stumbling into quite a bit of .22LR lately, too, so I'm good for a couple or three years of that stuff, too.

Life is good!

Can never have enough ammo and as we all know the length of a lifetime varies by quite a bit sometimes... For me, I like having at least 200 pcs of brass for each rifle I own (besides 22lr and .223 rem where I have thousands of those), a thousand bullets for each rifle/chambering, and enough powder to blow the garage up . Is that enough? Well, probably...